Board Proposed To Run Tri-county Rail System

Reluctant representatives agreed Monday to form a regional authority to administer a proposed tri-county rail system even as congressional support to finance the project dwindled.

The measure, thick with limiting conditions, must be drafted by attorneys for Palm Beach, Broward and Dade counties and approved by each county commission to become law.

It will be followed, officials said, by a tenuous financing plan. State and federal commitments would be sought one at a time over the next six months.

State Department of Transportation planners conceded Monday that the rail project is behind schedule. Service was to have begun in early 1987 along with work to widen Interstate 95 in Broward and parts of Palm Beach counties.

The rail system would run from Miami`s Metrorail north to West Palm Beach.

Also Monday, the Republican staff of the U.S. Senate Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee recommended against rail loans already approved by the House.

The loan package, plus $4 million for a Metrorail station in Miami, was restored to the $10.8 billion transportation package only after Sen. Lawton Chiles, D-Fla., lobbied the chairman of the transportation appropriations subcommittee. It still has to be approved by the full committee Thursday.

But the federal Office of Management and Budget has threatened to recommend a presidential veto of the transportation money bill if the Senate does not trim spending well below what the House has recommended, or by at least 38 percent.

Even if the $12.5 million federal loan is approved this week, the availability of federal highway money to operate the train during construction on I-95 will not be certain until at least April. Officials fear taxpayers may get stuck paying back the loan.

Dade and Palm Beach representatives to an ad-hoc committee on the tri-county train at first refused to become involved in any agreement unless there was an understanding that local governments would not be liable for the project`s cost.

After five years of operating trains under expected state and federal subsidies during the I-95 construction, said state Rep. Tom Gustafson, D-Fort Lauderdale, local governments could opt out and close it down without risk.